Founded in 2001 by members of a number of existing conservative parties, the party has won more seats than any other party in four general election victories in 2002, 2007, 2011 and 2015, winning 34.3%, 46.6%, 49.8% and 40.9% respectively. The party held a majority of seats for 13 years, but lost in it the June 2015 general election.

In the presidential election of 2014, the AKP's long time leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was elected President. In the party's first extraordinary congress, former foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu was unanimously elected unopposed as party leader and took over as Prime Minister on 28 August 2014.

Although the party is described as an Islamist party in some media, party officials reject those claims.[35] According to former minister Hüseyin Çelik, "In the Western press, when the AK Party administration – the ruling party of the Turkish Republic – is being named, unfortunately most of the time 'Islamic,' 'Islamist,' 'mildly Islamist,' 'Islamic-oriented,' 'Islamic-based' or 'with an Islamic agenda,' and similar language is being used. These characterizations do not reflect the truth, and they sadden us." Çelik added, "The AK Party is a conservative democratic party. The AK Party's conservatism is limited to moral and social issues."[36] Also in a separate speech made in 2005, Prime Minister Erdoğan stated, "We are not an Islamic party, and we also refuse labels such as Muslim-democrat." Erdoğan went on to say that the AK Party's agenda is limited to "conservative democracy".[37]

The party's foreign policy has also been widely described as Neo-Ottomanist,[38] an ideology that promotes renewed Turkish political engagement in the former territories of its predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire. However, the party's leadership has also rejected this label.[39]

In 2005, the party was granted observer membership in the European People's Party (EPP). In November 2013, the party however left the EPP to join the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR) instead.[40] This move was attributed to the AKP's disappointment not to be granted full membership in the EPP, while it was admitted as a full member of the AECR.[41] It drew criticism in both national and European discourses, as the driving force of Turkey's aspirations to become a member of the European Union decided to join a largely eurosceptic alliance, abandoning the more influential pro-European EPP, feeding suspicions that AKP wants to join a watered down, not a closely integrated EU.[42]

The Justice and Development Party has faced two closure cases in its history. Just 10 days before the national elections of 2002, Turkey's chief prosecutor, Sabih Kanadoğlu, asked the Turkish constitutional court to close the Justice and Development Party, which was leading in the polls at that time. The chief prosecutor charged the Justice and Development Party with abusing the law and justice. He based his case on the fact that the party's leader had been banned from political life for reading an Islamist poem, and thus the party had no standing in elections. The European Commission had previously criticised Turkey for banning the party's leader from participating in elections.[43]

The party again faced a closure trial in 2008. At an international press conference in Spain, Erdoğan answered a question of a journalist by saying, "What if the headscarf is a symbol? Even if it were a political symbol, does that give [one the] right to ban it? Could you bring prohibitions to symbols?" These statements led to a joint proposal of the Justice and Development Party and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party for changing the constitution and the law to lift a ban on women wearing headscarves at state universities. Soon afterwards, Turkey's chief prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya, asked the Constitutional Court of Turkey to close down the party on charges of violating the separation of religion and state in Turkey.[44][45][46] The closure request failed by only one vote, as only 6 of the 11 judges ruled in favour, with 7 required; however, 10 out of 11 judges agreed that the Justice and Development Party had become "a center for anti-secular activities", leading to a loss of 50% of the state funding for the party.[47]

The AK party won a sweeping victory in the 2002 elections, which saw every party previously represented in the Grand National Assembly ejected from the chamber. In the process, it won a two-thirds majority of seats, becoming the first Turkish party in 11 years to win an outright majority. Erdoğan normally would have become prime minister, but was banned from holding any political office after a 1994 incident in which he read a poem deemed pro-Islamist by judges. As a result, Gül became prime minister. It survived the crisis over the 2003 invasion of Iraq despite a massive back bench rebellion where over a hundred AK Party MPs joined those of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) in parliament to prevent the government from allowing the United States to launch a Northern offensive in Iraq from Turkish territory. Later, Erdoğan's ban was abolished with the help of the CHP and Erdoğan became prime minister by being selected to parliament after a by-election in Siirt.

Party leader Erdoğan on a poster thanking the people for the election results.

The AK Party has undertaken structural reforms, and during its rule Turkey has seen rapid growth and an end to its three decade long period of high inflation rates. Inflation had fallen to 8.8% by 2004.

Influential business publications such as The Economist consider the AK Party's government the most successful in Turkey in decades.[48]

Voter base by monthly household income. AK Party is the largest party in group 1, 2, 3 and 4, while CHP is the largest in group 5, the richest 20% of Turkey.

On April 14, 2007, an estimated 300,000 people marched in Ankara to protest the possible candidacy of Erdoğan in the 2007 presidential election, afraid that if elected as President, he would alter the secular nature of the Turkish state.[49] Erdoğan announced on April 24, 2007 that the party had decided to nominate Abdullah Gül as the AK Party candidate in the presidential election.[50] The protests continued over the next several weeks, with over one million reported at an April 29 rally in Istanbul,[51][52] tens of thousands reported at separate protests on May 4 in Manisa and Çanakkale,[53] and one million in İzmir on May 13.[54]

Early parliamentary elections were called after the failure of the parties in parliament to agree on the next Turkish president. The opposition parties boycotted the parliamentary vote and deadlocked the election process. At the same time, Erdoğan claimed the failure to elect a president was a failure of the Turkish political system and proposed to modify the constitution.

The AK Party achieved victory in the rescheduled July 22, 2007 elections with 46.6% of the vote, translating into control of 341 of the 550 available parliamentary seats. Although the AK Party received significantly more votes in 2007 than in 2002, the number of parliamentary seats they controlled decreased due to the rules of the Turkish electoral system. However, they retained a comfortable ruling majority.[14] "No Stopping, Push On!" was the slogan of the Justice and Development Party in the general elections of 2007.

Territorially, the elections of 2007 saw a major advance for the AK Party, with the party outpolling the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party in traditional Kurdish strongholds such as Van and Mardin, as well as outpolling the secular-left CHP in traditionally secular areas such as Antalya and Artvin. Overall, the AK Party secured a plurality of votes in 68 of Turkey's 81 provinces, with its strongest vote of 71% coming from Bingöl. Its weakest vote, a mere 12%, came from Tunceli, the only Turkish province where the Alevi form a majority.[55] Abdullah Gül was elected President in late August with 339 votes in the third round – the first at which a simple majority is required – after deadlock in the first two rounds, in which a two-thirds majority is needed.

After the opposition parties deadlocked the 2007 presidential election by boycotting the parliament, the ruling AK party proposed a constitutional reform package. The reform package was first vetoed by President Sezer. Then he applied to the Turkish constitutional court about the reform package, because the president is unable to veto amendments for the second time. The court did not find any problems in the package and 69% of the voters supported the constitutional changes.

The reforms consisted of:

electing the president by popular vote instead of by parliament;

reducing the presidential term from seven years to five;

allowing the president to stand for re-election for a second term;

holding general elections every four years instead of five;

reducing the quorum of lawmakers needed for parliamentary decisions from 367 to 184.

The Turkish local elections of 2009 took place during the financial crisis of 2007–2010. After the success of the AK Party in the 2007 general elections, the party saw a decline in the local elections of 2009. In these elections the AK Party received 39% of the vote, 3% less than in the local elections of 2004. Still, the AK Party remained the dominating party in Turkey. The second party CHP received 23% of the vote and the third party MHP received 16% of the vote. The AK Party won in Turkey's largest cities: Ankara and Istanbul.[56]

Reforming the Constitution was one of the main pledges of the AK Party during the 2007 election campaign. The main opposition party CHP was not interested in altering the Constitution on a big scale, making it impossible to form a Constitutional Commission (Anayasa Uzlaşma Komisyonu).[57] The amendments lacked the two-thirds majority needed to instantly become law, but secured 336 votes in the 550 seat parliament – enough to put the proposals to a referendum. The reform package included a number of issues: such as the right of individuals to appeal to the highest court, the creation of the ombudsman's office, the possibility to negotiate a nationwide labour contract, positive exceptions for female citizens, the ability of civilian courts to convict members of the military, the right of civil servants to go on strike, a privacy law, and the structure of the Constitutional Court. The referendum was agreed by a majority of 58%.

In the 2015 general election held on 7 June, the AKP gained 40.87% of the vote and 258 seats in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi, TBMM). Though it still remains to be the biggest party in Turkey, the AKP lost its status as the majority party and the power to form a single-party government, of which it had been maintaining without interruption for 13 years since it had come to power in 2002. Also, in this election, the AKP was pushing to gain 330 seats in the Grand National Assembly so that it could put a series of constitutional changes to a referendum, one of them was to switch Turkey from the current parliamentary government to an American-style executive presidency government. This pursuit met with a series of oppositions and criticism from the opposition parties and their supporters, fearing the measure would give more unchecked power to the current President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been drawing fierce criticisms both from home and abroad for his active role in the election, abandoning the traditional presidential role of maintaining a more neutral and impartial position in elections by his predecessors in the office. The result of the Kurdish issues-centred Peoples' Democratic Party (Turkey), HDP, breaking through the 10% threshold to achieve 13.12% out of the total votes cast and gaining 80 seats in the Grand National Assembly in this election successfully derailed the AKP from maintaining its hold of power as the majority party and a single-party government as well as enacting a referendum necessary to change the constitution. The AKP is now forced to form a coalition government in negotiation with other parties.

In September 2012, two-year-old conservative-oriented People's Voice Party (HAS Parti) dissolved itself and joined the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) with a majority of its delegates' votes.[58] In July 2012, following long-held speculation that former HSP leader Numan Kurtulmuş was on Prime MinisterErdoğan's mind as his possible successor as party head, Erdoğan personally proposed to Kurtulmuş the idea of merging the parties under the umbrella of the AKP.

^† "AK PARTİ" (in all capital letters) is the self-declared abbreviation of the name of the party, as stated in Article 3 of the party charter,[59] while "AKP" is mostly preferred by its opponents; the supporters prefer "AK PARTİ" since the word "ak" in Turkish means "white", "clean", or "unblemished," lending a positive impression.[60][61] The Chief Public Prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals initially used "AKP", but after an objection from the party,[62] "AKP" was replaced with "Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi" (without abbreviation) in documents.

^"Justice and Development Party". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Britannica.com. Retrieved 21 July 2014. Unlike its predecessors, the AKP did not centre its image around an Islamic identity; indeed, its leaders underscored that it was not an Islamist party and emphasized that its focus was democratization, not the politicization of religion.

^"AKP explains charter changes, slams foreign descriptions". Hürriyet Daily News. Istanbul. 2010-03-28. Retrieved 21 July 2014. In the Western press, when the AK Party administration, the ruling party of the Turkish Republic, is being named, unfortunately most of the time 'Islamic,' 'Islamist,' 'mildly Islamist,' 'Islamic-oriented,' 'Islamic-leaning,' 'Islamic-based' or 'with an Islamic agenda,' and similar language is being used. These characterizations do not reflect the truth, and they sadden us," Çelik said. "Yes, the AK Party is a conservative democratic party. The AK Party's conservatism is limited to moral and social issues.